More and more devices are being replaced with autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices. This is especially true in the hospitals of today with large arrays of autonomous and semiautonomous electronic devices being found in operating rooms, interventional suites, intensive care wards, emergency rooms, and the like. For example, glass and mercury thermometers are being replaced with electronic thermometers, intravenous drip lines now include electronic monitors and flow regulators, and traditional hand-held surgical instruments are being replaced by computer-assisted medical devices.
These electronic devices provide both advantages and challenges to the personnel operating them. Each of these electronic devices may be capable of providing large volumes of both accurate and precise data regarding patient conditions, the state of the electronic devices, and so forth. However, because each of these different electronic devices monitor and/or operate using different data and perform different tasks, they form a heterogeneous collection of medical devices. And despite the presence of programmable processors and microprocessors in many of these heterogeneous devices, the ability of these heterogeneous medical devices to share data and information and to coordinate their respective operations is often significantly underutilized.
In many cases, there is little to no exchange of data and information between the heterogeneous devices. One reason for this is that many of the heterogeneous medical devices in an operating room or interventional suite are provided by different vendors. Other reasons include differences between various models of devices and even the different tasks each of the medical devices is designed to perform. Consequently, many operating rooms and interventional suites are filled with heterogeneous medical devices that are not aware of each other and do not exchange data and information between themselves, much less exhibit any kind of significant interoperability. Instead, medical personnel are often expected to monitor and operate each of the devices independently or the devices must be used in such a way that they do not interfere with each other. For example, a computer-assisted surgical device may only be permitted in areas of the operating room where it won't interfere or collide with an imaging system also present in the operating room. Such a restriction may limit the functionality of both the computer-assisted surgical device and the imaging system.
One approach to supporting the exchange of data and information between heterogeneous devices and other forms of interoperability involves joint development efforts between the vendors or design teams of a single vendor. These efforts may include the development of custom hardware and/or software to permit two different heterogeneous devices to exchange data and information and to interoperate. These types of development efforts are often very time consuming and expensive and often require extensive testing and maintenance. They further provide only a limited solution to the larger interoperability problem because they only address issues between the two specific heterogeneous devices. The development work may not extend to other devices, even in the same product line, and likely will not extend to other types of devices or to devices from other vendors. These development efforts may further introduce complications associated with the exchange of intellectual property, such as trade secrets, and difficulty identifying the owner of the final product.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide improved methods and systems for supporting interoperability between heterogeneous devices. It is also desirable to provide improved methods and systems for supporting coordinated motion among the heterogeneous devices.